Commissioning of communication networks for control and automation in buildings is a challenging problem and it adds extra cost to the deployment of overall control and automation applications. Although wireless radios provide more flexibility and eliminates the need for wiring, it still requires installers to follow complicated manual procedures to commission the network. Typically, commissioning of large-scale deployments (e.g. commercial buildings) require specialists to perform a commissioning procedure and existing commissioning solutions are based on tools that are carried by the installer and are used to manually register/associate devices with controller, input location information, input device address/name, and adjust other operational parameters.
WO2006095317 describes an auto-commissioning method for building systems based on device location information and the building service plan. The method involves three stages. First, devices power up, form the network and use known radio frequency (RF)-based localization techniques to identify their locations. The devices locations are used to generate a device position map, which is stored at a central controller, also called, Building Management System (BMS). Then, in the next stage the map of devices is compared to the building service plan, which may be pre-defined and stored at the BMS. In this way the BMS obtains configuration data and verifies whether the expected devices are indentified in the device map at their expected position. As the last stage, the BMS sends configuration commands to the devices to complete the final association part of the auto-commissioning procedure. The commands sent by the BMS during the association are necessary to ensure the controllable devices are under the control of the right controller and other devices (e.g. sensors) have the right configuration parameters (destination address, sampling rate, reporting mode, etc). Accordingly, this is a centralized approach were all the operations to complete the association procedure are handled by the BMS.
WO 2008/001267 discloses a related commissioning method for local control networks in which a controller device is responsible for admitting devices within a local (restricted room/area/zone) network and configuring the control application. The proposed method in WO 2008/001267 is also based on existing localization techniques to identify devices' positions (e.g. Radio-Frequency (RF), Infra-Red (IR), and visual lighting based techniques). Furthermore, the controller collects information from local devices (type, capabilities, etc) and commissions the area/zone based on the collected information. The local (room/zone/area) controller may also communicate with a master controller or BMS and it may perform re-configuration of the network. In the method proposed in WO 2008/001267, the final stage of the commissioning procedure happens locally between the controlled and other devices.
The most advanced auto-commissioning systems today are semi-automatic, i.e., they require some form of manual input to commission every device. This results in high installation costs, and contributes to the idea that wireless building control/automation is a complex and costly technology. Currently, there is no completely automatic (or plug-and-play) commissioning solution for large-scale control systems, in which the devices (sensors, controllers, switches, etc.) automatically executes an commissioning procedure once powered up and establish the right association and network connections needed. One of the key problems with prior art systems is how to create control zones, associate devices (sensors/actuators) with their intended controller (ZC) and set up operational parameters for the network and applications with minimal or possibly no user intervention.
Although WO2006095317 and WO 2008/001267 address somewhat the auto-commissioning problem, the inventor of the present invention has appreciated that the last stage of the commissioning procedure, namely the final association of devices within control zones/area is not addressed in these references and an improved method and a system of associating or re-associating devices in a control network is of benefit, and has in consequence devised the present invention.